Muslims Cities Then And Now

How did Islamic science help Europe? What do the great Muslim cities of Timbuktu, Samarkand and Baghdad have in common? How is Eid celebrated in different parts of the world? Now young people have a chance to learn the answers to these questions, thanks to this exceptional learning program. This complete grade K to 6 instructional guides are suitable for teaching Social and Islamic studies in Muslim schools (including home schools), and for presenting Islamic history in public schools. Areas of education covered are: values education, community studies, multicultural history, geography and world history.

This unit is offered to upper elementary students as an introductory chapter to their first comprehensive study of American history. It may also be used as an adjunct to study of the European Age of Exploration in world history courses for upper elementary and middle school grades. It can be used as a supplement to or substitute for the textbook chapter which discusses America's origins in the Old World. It provides background for the period in which Europe reached out across the globe for the first time. This treatment attempts to go beyond the heroism and adventure stories about the Age of Exploration. Most textbook treatments of the period utterly fail to place Europe in the context of its cultural and technological development relative to other civilizations. This unit shows how the Islamic lands formed a hinge between East and West. It investigates the major motivations and development of the technological means for exploration. It goes beyond the stereotyped image of conflict between Christians and Muslims to explain the fruitful cultural exchange which occurred over the centuries. It demonstrates how the cosmopolitan character of the Islamic civilization united the Old World in interdepedence, contributing to Europe's later technological, scientific, cultural and economic achievements. Finally, the unit shows how all technological and historic advances in human civilization are cumulative efforts to which many peoples have made important contributions.

This supplementary unit is an introduction to the geography of regions where Muslims live as majorities and a description of the circumstances in which Muslims live as minorities. The focus is more regional than national, so as to overstep the arbitrary modern borders that divide Muslim populations among numerous countries. The unit is designed to complement typical geography surveys offered in elementary social studies curricula. It is designed for grade four, but may be used for grades five and six if the curriculum so requires. Study of this unit may be undertaken after the students have received an introduction to basic geography and map skills. It is probably best undertaken during the second half of the fourth grade year, but since important geography concepts and skills are both introduced and reviewed here, the teacher may be confident to proceed earlier. The structure of the unit is unique in that the student text is in the form of a play script, whose characters, a teacher and her students, model a cooperative learning experience as they study regions of the world where Muslims live. The main objectives of this unit are to provide students with an overview of the places where Muslims live as majority and minority communities, and to investigate selected aspects of geographic and cultural diversity within the context of Islamic unity. The unit consists of an eight-lesson student text with teaching suggestions and enrichment activities. Comprehension questions, map skills and worksheets accompany the text for concept reinforcement and skill building. While the unit is designed for flexibility, it is recommended that the students be exposed to the entire student text. If time does not allow extensive study of the unit materials, the teacher may select only basic material from the teaching suggestions rather than covering these with depth and enrichment.

This unit is built around a set of paired stories, one from the Qur'an or authentic traditions, and one related modern story. The overall objectives are: (l) to awaken the children's awareness of their identity and worth as Muslims, (2) to model Islamic behavior patterns, and (3) to cultivate a sense of identification and community with Muslims of long ago and in other parts of the modern world. While the unit is designed for kindergarten, its stories and activities may be useful for values instruction throughout the primary grades in a variety of instructional settings, including full-time, weekend and home schools. This unit, emphasizing values education, may also be useful in Muslim parenting classes. Each lesson consists of the story pair, to be presented to the children orally or dramatically, and suggested discussion guidelines and activities through which the values and related behaviors are developed and reinforced in the children's understanding. The 15 lessons are intended to implement teaching objectives in various units taught in a typical Islamic kindergarten social studies curriculum, on a selective or exhaustive basis, throughout the year.

Explores how Muslim Americans test the boundaries of American pluralism In 2004, the al-Islah Islamic Center in Hamtramck, Michigan, set off a contentious controversy when it requested permission to use loudspeakers to broadcast the adhān, or Islamic call to prayer. The issue gained international notoriety when media outlets from around the world flocked to the city to report on what had become a civil battle between religious tolerance and Islamophobic sentiment. The Hamtramck council voted unanimously to allow mosques to broadcast the adhān, making it one of the few US cities to officially permit it through specific legislation. Muslim American City explores how debates over Muslim Americans’ use of both public and political space have challenged and ultimately reshaped the boundaries of urban belonging. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic research in Hamtramck, which boasts one of the largest concentrations of Muslim residents of any American city, Alisa Perkins shows how the Muslim American population has grown and asserted itself in public life. She explores, for example, the efforts of Muslim American women to maintain gender norms in neighborhoods, mosques, and schools, as well as Muslim Americans’ efforts to organize public responses to municipal initiatives. Her in-depth fieldwork incorporates the perspectives of both Muslims and non-Muslims, including Polish Catholics, African American Protestants, and other city residents. Drawing particular attention to Muslim American expressions of religious and cultural identity in civil life—particularly in response to discrimination and stereotyping—Perkins questions the popular assumption that the religiosity of Muslim minorities hinders their capacity for full citizenship in secular societies. She shows how Muslims and non-Muslims have, through their negotiations over the issues over the use of space, together invested Muslim practice with new forms of social capital and challenged nationalist and secularist notions of belonging.

The Crusades continue to exert a fascination in the West as a story of perceived gallantry and battles against impossible odds. Yet what is less often considered is their effect on the Holy Land, and in particular the response of the Muslim world to the invasions of European Crusaders. In this book, W. B. Bartlett, author of four books on the Crusades, looks at these great events from the Muslim point of view. One of the effects was to unite a previously divided Islamic world against a common enemy. In the process, they gave an unstoppable impetus towards the declaring of jihad against the West, a holy war against Christendom. They also helped to shape the careers of some important figures, most notably Saladin, but also other great men like Sultan Baibars and Nur al-Din. The rise of these great leaders is traced in this book, as are the many great battles that were fought by men just as devoted to their cause as the Crusaders were.

Oleg Grabar, 'Michael Meinecke and His Last Book.' Thomas Leisten, 'Mashhad al-Nasr: Monuments of War and Victory in Medieval Islamic Art.' Jere L. Bacharach, 'Marwanid Umayyad Building Activities: Speculations on Patronage.' Nuha N.N. Khoury, 'The Meaning of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in the Tenth Century.' Nasser Rabbat, 'Al-Azhar Mosque: An Architectural Chronicle of Cairo's History.' Howyda N. Al-Harithy, 'The Complex of Sultan Hasan in Cairo: Reading between the Lines.' Michael Cooperson, 'Baghdad in Rhetoric and Narrative.' Aptullah Kuran, 'A Spatial Study of Three Ottoman Capitals: Bursa, Edirne, and Istanbul.' Filiz aĥman and Zeren Tanindi, 'Remarks on Some Manuscripts at the Topkapi Palace Treasury in the Context of Ottoman-Safavid Relations.' Yildirim Yavuz, 'The 1922-26 Restoration Project of the Masjid al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin.' Anthony Welch, 'A Medieval Center of Learning in India: The Haus Khas in Delhi.' Alpay zdural, 'On Interlocking Similar or Corresponding Figures and Ornamental Patterns of Cubic Equations.'